


The Swell Beneath Your Sternum

by RatOuttaHell



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Angst, Canon Universe, I am edgelord angstathon, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, POV Second Person, Past Relationship(s), and it could be platonic or not platonic, anyway, hello angstfic my old friend, idk if that's your ship don't get your hopes up, the axel/saix is vague and past, ugh 15 y/o me would've loved this, ummmm what else, whoops this is the first fic I've posted here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-01
Updated: 2015-09-01
Packaged: 2018-04-18 13:28:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4707641
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RatOuttaHell/pseuds/RatOuttaHell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"This has been the routine (with some exceptions and variations) for the past… well, The Castle that Never Was doesn't keep time well. Someplace more real, you think, this arrangement would have been going on for the last two weeks or so. Really, though, it could have been months. It could have been years, and you would never know for sure, or even for centuries. After all, it wasn't as though either of you would age to reflect the time. As it stands, your only benchmark for how long Axel has been unceremoniously living in your room is Roxas's departure from the Organization."<br/><br/>(In which Roxas has left, Axel is sad, and Demyx doesn't get it.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Swell Beneath Your Sternum

**Author's Note:**

> oh boy, so this is the first fic I'm posting to my shiny new ao3 account! besides wanting to follow a couple of (hundred) stories, I originally intended to put the fics I originally posted to ff.net on here... possibly after some serious revision. so far that hasn't happened, but I DID wake up with a fully-formed fic idea bursting from my head like the goddess Athena (though thankfully no one had to split my skull with an axe to get it out). so, after some wiki refreshers on kh canon and an accidental four-hour tangent into research about sitar music, I wrote this down, did some fiddling around with the sentences, and voila! 
> 
> so, I guess, please let me know whether or not you liked it? and if you know anything about playing the sitar or about Hindustani music and I got something wrong, please share that information with me, I would love to know! ahhhh, sorry, I just got so nervous and excited. my first fic on ao3! it's like a big-kid fic! grownup fic! I'm an adult! please enjoy my story!

You are, of course, playing your sitar when Axel walks into your bedroom – improvising on a raga you're hoping will help alleviate some of the mysterious tension that has taken up residence in your shoulders, back, and neck recently. You don't stop playing at his arrival, and he walks silently past you to lie down on your bed, green eyes hazy and never once landing on you. Like one of you – you're not sure which one – is a ghost, existing on another plane and unable to contact or comprehend the other. The mattress shifts slightly with his weight, an indicator that, in reality, you share the same world. With that reminder, you release a breath you didn't realize you were holding. You close your eyes and try to focus on the raga. Maybe it can do Axel some good, too.  
  
This has been the routine (with some exceptions and variations) for the past… well, The Castle that Never Was doesn't keep time well. Days and nights don't really exist here; what you learned about playing different ragas for different times and seasons falls just short of useful in this sterile place, with its white walls interrupted by windows forever gazing out on an inky and eternal night. Someplace more real, you think, this arrangement would have been going on for the last two weeks or so. Really, though, it could have been months. It could have been years, and you would never know for sure, or even for centuries. After all, it wasn't as though either of you would age to reflect the time.  
  
As it stands, your only benchmark for how long Axel has been unceremoniously living in your room is Roxas's departure from the Organization. Axel hasn't said anything about it – really, he hasn't said anything about anything – but he doesn't have to. You would bet your sitar and all your precious vacation days that he's grieving, or something similar. Whatever that means for someone like him. For someone like the both of you.  
  
This isn't the first time Axel has made your room his home away from home. During your earlier days in the Organization, you and Axel actually spent a lot of time in each other's rooms, choosing whose room to occupy in turns or based on convenience. Those had been fundamentally different situations, though, right down to the very air that hung between you. Your interactions were light. Casual. Comfortable. Ragas full of laughter and joy, conversations peppered with jokes and wide, white grins (Axel's was almost too wide, sometimes, like it would split the world open and take everything in with it). In those early days you sometimes liked to summon the Dancers, and Axel would make a big show of bowing to them before taking one as his partner for a “very serious” waltz or tango. His movements were overblown and silly, but they betrayed a deeper sense of rhythm he likely didn't realize existed within him. You would always applaud him and praise his form, and he would accept with the kind of exaggerated ego you suspected was almost entirely artificial. You still can't tell if he knew how good he was.  
  
That relationship started to taper off after Axel ended up in charge of Roxas. It wasn't as though you never saw each other anymore, or that you never spent time with each other. Those occasions were just less frequent, and Axel was getting more involved with Serious Organization Business (which he could never tell you about with any kind of clarity), so even when he was around, the atmosphere was heavier. And it wasn't so much that you missed him afterwards, because what kind of a bond can exist between two beings with no hearts? It was just that you were bored, and you may be lazy, but bored has never been one of your favorite states. The jolt of emptiness that felt like swimming into an unexpected cold patch of the ocean… that was boredom, you supposed.  
  
The first time Axel decided to temporarily make your room his base of operations, his command center, his place to sleep and wake, _his room_ , that was sometime after his return from Castle Oblivion. Or, as you tend to remember it, sometime after his return from (supposed) death. He had stormed through your door and immediately started in on a tirade whose subject you couldn't discern, stomping back and forth across the white tile floor and punctuating his speech with gestures that were accompanied by bursts of flame. Poorly-contained bursts of flame, actually – your bedspread briefly caught on fire. After quickly smothering the flames with your coat, you asked him what he was so angry about.  
  
His reply was one word: “Saix,” said through gritted teeth. And then the words stopped. He sat down on your bed, on the singed spot you had just saved, still clearly seething, and refused to elaborate any further. You improvised on a raga you hoped would soothe him, but he had gone quieter by then. He stayed in your room, in your bed, back curled away to avoid touching yours in sleep, for what you guessed constituted the span of a few days. No matter how carefully you asked, he wouldn't further explain what had happened with Saix beyond angry mutterings about how he had “changed.” You hadn't known Saix for as long as Axel had, but you figured you could understand being upset that he had changed, considering what an asshole he was now. A couple of times you tried to break the tension with jokes about Saix being a pain in the ass paper-pusher gone mad with power. Axel offered no response whatsoever, so you gave up.  
  
For a while you wondered why he wouldn't go to Roxas's room if he wasn't going to talk to you, anyway. If you'd been forced to venture a guess, you would've wagered that whatever issue Axel was grappling with involved Roxas in some way. People here underestimate you because of your reluctance to do anything “productive,” but it's not as though you're brainless as well as heartless.  
  
At this point, you are decently certain that Axel has been living out of your room significantly longer than the last stint. Your sheets and cloaks are beginning to smell like him, like those little red candies your friends back in your old life once tricked you into eating by the handful so they burned your mouth and it didn't feel right for days. Cinnamon and heat, painful heat, but enough sweetness that you always had to stop yourself from trying them again.  
  
Noise and chaos are part of Axel's natural state; it takes a serious disturbance to silence him. His behavior now goes beyond silence, even. It's nothingness. It's automated, walled-off. You hear more from him when he's sleeping, mumbling apologies, gasping and shuddering with sobs, his lips forming around the same name over and over and over again. It wakes you up every time. You always turn towards him and press a hand to his back, knowing that he won't rebuke it in his state. You wait until his somnolent apologies trail off and his breaths even out, then turn your back to him again and close your eyes. A couple of mornings (well, whatever passes for morning here) he's woken up from these fits almost too groggy to stand, cursing whatever mission he's been assigned under his breath. Half-asleep, you try to convince him to skip out. He's too tired, and you've done it a thousand times. He consistently ignores you and goes off to complete whatever mission he's been burdened with, his gait unsteady and unrested.  
  
You can't quite understand why he's taking so much time to recover from Roxas's departure. Though he told you very little about what happened between him and Saix, you had a much firmer grasp on his reaction to that apparent upheaval. You knew all along that he and Saix had a relationship that stretched back to when they were Somebodies, a bond etched so deeply that a part of it still echoed within the heartless chambers of their chests. If Axel's “feelings” seemed intense back then, it was because they were hardly even _his_ at all. At least, that's how you had understood it during Axel's first extended stay in your room.  
  
So what is this, then? Axel hadn't known Roxas before they were Nobodies. At first, he even seemed annoyed by being asked to “babysit,” as he called it. But then… you can't deny that there was some sort of softening around Axel's edges as they spent more time together. And, paradoxically, an intensification that came along with it. His eyes could bore holes in walls, something burned within him the same way the chakrams ignited at his fingertips. With greater and greater frequency his wolf-white smiles seemed intent on expanding past his face and tearing into the fabric of reality as you knew it. You thought to yourself that maybe Axel had been wrong – it wasn't Saix who changed. The transformation was captivating, honestly, and if you listened to the way he said Roxas's name you could almost feel something you had felt in your life from before, a swelling beneath your sternum that caught you off guard every time. But you still couldn't grasp the concept – how could two heartless beings have a bond like that? How could something that meant next to nothing hurt him like this when it was over?  
  
You look back at Axel behind you, facing the wall with his long limbs curled in as if to protect himself, faceless black with a shock of red for hair. You can barely tell that he's breathing. You sigh and start fidgeting with the pegs to re-tune your sitar. Even if you can't wrap your head around _why_ or _how_ he's hurting, the pain is obvious enough. After a meaningless stretch of time, you experimentally pluck one of the upper strings. The sympathetic strings beneath resonate with the feeling, supporting the note you created, working together with the upper string to form the tone you're looking for. You breathe in and start to build a melody using Madhuvanti, your fingers shifting and lingering over frets and plucking strings as you start to find your rhythm. If it's not the right time of day here, it must be somewhere, and even if what Axel is experiencing is hollower than “love” (it must be, you tell yourself, it must be), it's still the closest word you can match it to. Maybe through playing Madhuvanti you'll be able to better understand.  
  
You lose yourself in your playing for a while before you realize that you're yawning. Time may not be real here, but exhaustion is, and you guess that's close enough. The muscles in your shoulders still ache, though the pain might be less than it was when you first woke up. You lean your sitar carefully against the wall, turn off the light, and climb into bed. You settle into the position you've been sleeping in since you started sharing space: lying on your side, your back to Axel, just enough space that you're not touching, but you can still feel the warmth coming off his back. He's alive, you think to yourself with mild relief. Or, as alive as someone like the two of you can be. As alive as someone simultaneously heartless and heartbroken can be. Moments creep on, and before you can fall asleep, he begins to speak.  
  
“You know,” he says, his voice hoarse but gentle. “I think I was in love with him.”  
  
He doesn't have to say who. Your breath catches. You take the time to carefully consider your next question before giving it voice.  
  
“What does it feel like?” you ask, because it's been a long time. For a little while, Axel doesn't say anything at all. You wonder if you went too far by asking. You wonder if he's going to speak again at all. But then he does, his broken voice dissolving the silence between your backs.  
  
“It's like,” he starts, but he falters. He takes a breath and then starts again. “It's like something that's too much all the time, but for some fucked up reason you're happy about it. And every time you do anything, every time you open your mouth or move or breathe, you let some of it out. But there's never less of it. There's always more, more, more; it keeps growing. And it hurts and it's too much, but you're happy about it. Over the goddamn moon. It's like there's this balloon in your chest and it keeps getting bigger and bigger but it doesn't burst. It's awful… and it's amazing.” His breath hitches like he might say something else, but then he lets it go. The next time he speaks, it is only to ask: “Does that make sense?”  
  
“Yeah,” you say quietly, even though it doesn't make sense that he could feel like that. It sounds like something you would need a heart to feel. Axel nods, the back of his hair (tangled and knotted; he hasn't been taking good care of it lately) rustling on the pillow. Then he turns and wraps his arms around your waist, presses his warm, slightly damp face into your neck. You can smell him – cinnamon-sweet and with enough heat to burn you, and a bit of smoke under that.  
  
A cold wave of terror washes over you at the sudden swelling beneath your sternum.


End file.
